Stttrrrreeeeettcchhhhiiiinnnngggg It Out

I recently had my first mooncake of the year… Yes, it is that time of the year again; mooncake time of the year.

But have you noticed? “Mooncake time” has stretched progressively over the years, and now lasts for a lot longer than is traditional. It used to be that mooncakes were only sold after the Hungry Ghosts Festival (which runs for the whole of the seventh lunar month; a time when it is said that the Gates of Hell are flung open, and the souls of the dead are released and allowed to wander the planet freely and to mingle with the living) had ended. It was deemed inauspicious to sell mooncakes during the ghoulish seventh month – after all, the Mid-Autumn Festival is considered one of the most auspicious of the major Chinese festivals; and the twain must not meet.

This meant that, with the Mid-Autumn Festival (or more casually known as the “mooncake festival”) falling on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month (the day when the moon is said to be at its roundest and brightest for the whole year), you essentially got to eat mooncakes for about 15 days each year – from the 1st to the 15th of the eighth month.

However, the powers that be in the hard-hitting world of commerce decided that they weren’t making enough profits (despite the daylight-robbery-esque prices of mooncakes during the festival); they started to sell mooncakes in the last week of the Hungry Ghosts Festival, figuring that modern society was less superstitious and people wouldn’t mind buying and eating mooncakes during the tail-end of the 7th month. And they were right; consumers lapped up the opportunity to indulge in these sweet treats for an extra week.

With dollar signs flashing in their eyes, retailers soon pushed the yearly launch of mooncakes to the middle of the seventh month (hey, what’s another week between money-takers and money-givers, right?); mooncake eating now stretched over one full month.

Then, a couple of years back, I started noticing that some bakeries and restaurants (thank goodness hotels on the whole have stuck to the less-insane mid-seventh month launch date) were rolling out the mooncakes at about the same time the first joss-sticks were lighted at the start of the Hungry Ghosts Festival! This made for six weeks of mooncakes! That was pushing it a little I thought.

But this year seems to take the cake… um, the mooncake that is. Mooncakes were already on sale in the middle of the 6th lunar month! Two full months before the festival proper! The festival this year falls on 28 September; the very first mooncakes started to trickle onto the market at the end of July. To me, this seems overdone; it's robbing the festival of all meaning and significance. I mean, there are only so many mooncakes you can eat before you get well and truly sick of them – they are after all very, very sweet and rich confections. By the time you get around to the festival itself, you are not going to be wanting anymore mooncakes.

Another sad case of commercial greed sending a bona fide festival that once held much significance and joy, to its early dollar bills-lined grave?

I used to love mooncakes. Next to Chinese New Year, the Mid-Autumn Festival was probably my favorite Chinese festival. Years ago, I would look forward with much anticipation to the annual festival. Those two weeks in the run-up to the festival were so precious; a time to cherish and enjoy every opportunity to indulge in these yummy sweet delights. Now, mooncakes don’t really move me very much anymore. I still like them, but those heady, heart-a-flutter, joyous feelings (quite like the first flush of love) are gone. It is hard to get excited about something two months ahead of schedule; it’s what I call eating out of context!

I’ve not had any urge to buy the mooncakes that have been launched so far this year. The only reason I’ve gotten to eat some recently is because a dear friend brought me a box of them as a gift – a box of mooncakes hand-carried all the way from Hong Kong no less.

I have to admit: I still enjoy the “ceremony” of opening up a fresh box of mooncakes; I have a sort of personal “breaking into a new box of mooncakes” ritual, leftover from the days when mooncakes were a much scarcer commodity.

These ones from my friend came in a lavishly illustrated metal box (see top picture), as opposed to the traditional paper box. I spent a few moments taking in the lovely countenance of “Lady Moon” with her rabbit. I gazed at the depiction of the Hong Kong skyline, and reminded myself it has been more than a year since I was last in the territory, and perhaps it was time to make another visit soon for lots of good food and shopping. Before my mind wandered too far away, I jolted back into the present, and enthusiastically pulled open the lid of the box…

And a glorious sight it was that greeted me… four round, glossily glazed, lusciously golden brown discs stared out at me. This first glimpse into a box of mooncakes is the first in a series of my “favorite” opening-of-a-new-box-of-mooncakes moments. There’s nothing quite like four suave, highly tanned mooncakes gazing at me to get my taste buds into a right tizzy.

One of the mooncakes was lovingly removed from its plastic cradle within the box. A sharp knife was run quickly and painlessly down its center… and immediately, it revealed its glorious secret…

Two rich, shiny golden orbs blinked dazzlingly in the sunlight that was streaming through my kitchen window. Oooh… this was a box of white lotus seed paste (lian yong) mooncakes with double (salted duck’s egg) yolks.

I’d have to admit that I’ve never been a great fan of Hong Kong’s Maxim’s mooncakes (sorry, BL ), but these were nice versions.

The yolks were incredibly fresh: rich, vibrant, bright hues of sunset with a luscious, glowing sheen.

The white lotus seed paste was of an appetizingly natural color, as opposed to some of the rather exaggerated shades of “pale” that we sometimes see here – which in all probability are the results of adding some kind of starch (possibly potato starch) to the lotus seed paste mixture, both to add bulk and to lighten the color.

The lotus paste in these HK mooncakes were of a delightfully silken smoothness and softness – a result of a lot of oil being used to cook and mix the paste. It made for delicious, but incredibly sinful eating. Everything was very fresh: the pastry, the lotus paste and the yolks.

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Since we are talking about mooncakes, let’s talk about the types that I like…

I’m not a snow-skin ("bing pi" or literal translation: ice skin) mooncake person at all; mooncakes with the baked pastry crust are the only ones I will eat. I find the snow-skin too sweet; and after discovering, many years back, just how much shortening (or lard traditionally) and sugar goes into making the snow-skin pastry, I’ve never been able to bring myself to it eat again. It has a lot more fat and sugar than the baked pastry skin (which in itself already has a fair bit of oil). It is rather deceptive I know; the snow skin feels less rich and oily, but there is a whole lot more fat and sugar in it by necessity, to get the pastry to that requisite soft, silky, pliable and palatable texture. (For me, it has been another classic case of being turned off a food after discovering the “secrets” behind the recipes and realizing how terribly unhealthy the food is; taste for taste, I just can’t justify the caloric consumption of a snow skin mooncake over the baked pastry mooncake. I have to do right by my tummy after all! )

…and by my eyes and taste-buds too. I love the look and taste of the baked crust. I really do. As with almost all things baked in an oven, it is aromatic in that special way that only things baked in an oven can be. That special golden, tanned yumminess that is quite irreplaceable.

The crust is easily my favorite part of the mooncake. Yet, I don’t like it when it is all just pastry either… family and friends always suggest to me that I should simply buy and eat “piglets in a basket” instead, since these are just mooncake pastry dough shaped into little piglets, baked and sold in tiny little plastic baskets. It has no fillings; just pastry dough. The tradition of selling these “piglets in a basket” evolved from bakers wanting to find a way to use up leftover mooncake dough; they thus shaped the scrap pieces of pastry into cute piglets and sold them as a cheap, cookie-like Festival snack for children. But even as a child, I never took to the little piglets. No, much as I like the pastry, I don’t like an entire dense chunk of it; mine must come as a thin layer over some scrumptious filling…

I’m quite fussy about the number of yolks in the mooncakes too. I don’t really like having more than one salted egg yolk in my mooncakes; I think it upsets the intricate balance between pastry, lotus paste and yolk too much.

Ideally, each wedge of mooncake should have a thin layer of crust, a nice amount of smooth, silken, sweet lotus paste, and just a touch of yolk to add a nuance of saltiness. Too much yolk and it just gets too stomach-sinkingly rich; a feeling that sometimes even cups and cups of Chinese tea cannot remedy. Not pleasant. Two yolks in a mooncake are still tolerable; but really, when you hit four yolks in one mooncake (usually the preferred variety for business gifts as it symbolizes an abundance of golden riches), it’s hardly palatable - in my opinion at least. There’s hardly any room for the lotus paste; it’s almost like eating salted yolks wrapped in pastry!

My all-time favorite mooncake is my mum’s home-made wu ren (mixed nut with Jin Hua ham) mooncake. This is the only wu ren mooncake that I (and the whole family for that matter) truly love; I don’t particularly fancy many of the store-bought ones, which are usually bulked up with a lot of starch – nuts are expensive ingredients – and which almost always leave out the Chinese almonds ("nam yan" in Cantonese), because they are expensive, but which have a unique texture and add incredible fragrance and aroma to the mooncakes. This is the one mooncake my dad always requests from my mum each year. Sadly, I don’t think we are supposed to make mooncakes this year – I think someone mentioned the other day that, in light of the family’s recent bereavement, it is customary to abstain from making celebratory food. We can buy and eat mooncakes, but not make them. Go figure. Maybe I heard wrong. Hopefully I heard wrong.

So, my most preferred mooncakes in descending order of love:

• Mum’s home-made wu ren mooncake
• A tie between: dou sha (red bean paste) mooncake with melon seeds; AND bai lian yong (white lotus seed paste) mooncake with a single yolk
• Custard mooncake *
• Regular (brown) lian yong (lotus seed paste) mooncake with a single yolk
• Teochew-style deep fried crispy yam paste mooncake **

* I tasted this variety for the very first time in Hong Kong more than 10 years ago; the mooncakes were from the Zen restaurant in Pacific Place. It was love at first bite: rich, thick, smooth, eggy custard wrapped in fragrant golden brown pastry. After that, every year I would find some means of getting a box of the stuff brought to me from Hong Kong. Then, some years back, East Ocean restaurant in Singapore started producing them – and they do a credible version. So now it is a mere short car ride to get my yearly fix.

** I used to like this a lot. But suddenly, one day, I just fell out of love. I still think these crispy deep fried mooncakes taste very good whilst you are eating them; but the after-feeling is not so pleasant – that feeling of over-greased richness, that lump of heaviness that sits at the bottom of your stomach. And these mooncakes don’t keep well at all; they are best eaten on the day they are made. They’re still okay the next day, but it’s pretty much downhill all the way after that. Having said that, I still like to savor a small piece of this very fragrant and highly more-ish concoction once in a while – oh, maybe every other year or so; but that is about as far as the love affair goes, at my age.

Thus far, I have not been able to get involved with any of the spandangled, new-age flavors that have been rolled out over the last few years – things like durian-, mango-, coffee- or green tea-flavored mooncakes. There are even things like birds’ nest mooncakes and XO (Cognac) mooncakes! The only reaction I have been able to muster is: huh? I think there is something to be said for having boundaries in creativity, and that includes creativity in food; I’m not sure about the merits of innovation for innovation’s sake alone. It’s amazing the things people will do to entice consumers to part with a few more dollars. Some traditional flavors are worth honoring, I feel.

The one “newer” flavor that I find acceptable is pumpkin. But that is not even really “new”. It is a natural extension of the Teochew yam mooncake (which in itself is a derivative of the famous Teochew dessert or nee that oftentimes is served with both yam and pumpkin pastes).

I’m not taken with ice cream mooncakes either. Sorry, but I really can’t see what the fuss is about; if I want ice cream (which I can eat year round on-demand), I would order a sundae; I don’t need to have it in the shape of a mooncake.

However, not all innovations are bad. Last year, a friend gave me a box of jelly (agar-agar) mooncakes, and those I really enjoyed.

So, yes, I’m probably a mixed up gal when it comes to mooncakes; but ultimately I’m also a traditionalist at heart.

And now that I’ve shot my mouth off about my mooncake preferences, what’s your mooncake fix of choice?

It’s still another month to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but most surely, the madness has already long started; the moon is not yet round, but mooncakes are already all around.

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
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